Astro declares 1.5 sen quarterly dividend
KUALA LUMPUR: Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd made a net profit of RM118.1mil for its third quarter ended Oct 31, 14.1% higher than the net profit of RM103.5mil in the same period last year, boosted mainly by an unrealised forex gain of RM30.6mil.
The pay-TV operator's revenue stood at RM1.08bil for the quarter under review against RM995.3mil a year earlier.
Astro declared its maiden quarterly dividend of 1.5 sen per share which will be
paid out on Jan 11, 2013.
“Astro's growth will be primarily driven by the young and increasingly affluent population here,” chief executive officer Datuk Rohana Rozhan said at a press conference here.
For the nine months ended Oct 31, Astro's customer base grew by 278,000 while average revenue per user grew 6% on the back of a higher take-up of its products and services.
Rohana said the company, which recently obtained the winning bid for the Barclays Premier League broadcast rights, had its content costs “comfortably within budget”
Up to the nine months of the current financial year ending Jan 31, 2013, Astro's content costs stood at 31% of revenue.
“We have good visibility of our content cost, particularly in light of the recent successful bid,” she said.
During major sporting years, content costs were generally higher and could go up to 35%, she said.
Chief operating officer Henry Tan said Astro was “open” to proposals from other providers who wished to share its content as long as such proposals “made economic sense”.
Currently, Astro has over 3.2 million subscribers, of which about 1.8 million are watching their TV content via the Astro B.yond set-top boxes.
Of the 1.8 million customers, about two-thirds subscribe to high definition (HD) content.
“The encouraging thing about the statistics is that we only had 22 HD channels and expanded to 27 recently. Once we have new capacity, we have every intention to increase the number of HD channels.
“We believe HD channels is one of our key differentiators against what is available out there,” said Rohana,
For the nine-month period ended Oct 31, Astro's net profit fell 29% to RM334.84mil from RM472.04mil earlier.
The decrease in net profit was mainly due to higher depreciation of RM113.2mil and increase in finance costs of RM70.1mil, which was partly offset by increase in finance income of RM33.6mil and lower taxation of RM57.7mil,
Its revenue rose 11.5% to RM3.133bil from RM2.811bil for the nine-month period mainly due to increase in subscription and advertising revenue of RM269.4mil and RM52.2mil respectively.
Astro's share price ended up yesterday to RM2.97, the highest since it was listed on Oct 19.
Its share price had generally been under the water since its initial public offering (IPO), falling to an all-time low of RM2.59 last month but had begun climbing in the week ahead of the announcement of its third quarter results.
Rohana said Astro's IPO was priced “at the right level” of RM3.
“We are a growth company and will continue to deliver growth to shareholders, balancing between a progressive dividend policy and capital appreciation,” she said.
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